Mirror M*A*S*H, part 8
Part 1, part 2, part 3, part 4, part 5, part 6, and part 7.


Trapper got up. Absently, Hawkeye followed him with his eyes. He could reach out and take the man easily, gather up the warmth he wanted against him: but it wouldn’t get him what he wanted. What he wanted wasn’t clear to him. If he couldn’t think about it he couldn’t order it to happen. At least not here.

Another full glass of gin appeared in his hand. He’d lost sight of Trapper somehow.

“See if you can get this down him,” Trapper said.

“No,” the man said. When Hawkeye looked at him, he’d shut his mouth, and dropped his eyes.

Hawkeye lay back on the bunk. He stared from the man to Trapper and back to the man. “Can’t do it,” he said. “That’s as relaxed as he’s going to get: you might as well fuck him as is, because I don’t think I can get this down him.”

Trapper stood up. “Seriously?”

Hawkeye tilted the gin into his mouth. It had got so he liked the burn. He drank slowly and steadily. Trapper was still staring at him when he’d finished it. The man hadn’t moved.

“Fuck him if you want him,” Hawkeye said. “I’m going to get drunk.”

Trapper took hold of the man by his right arm, and pulled him up. The man went with him without resistance: Trapper put him in the middle of the floor. “You want to get undressed now, Francis?” he said pleasantly.

The man’s hand went to the middle of his chest, looking as if he were groping for something that wasn’t there.

Trapper came back and sat down on the bunk by Hawkeye. “Okay. What did we talk about outside?”

“I can’t remember.” Hawkeye was staring up at the tent ceiling.

“Sandwiches.” Trapper wriggled his eyebrows. “You wanted a sandwich. Didn’t you?”

Hawkeye shrugged.

“Look, you’re stuck with him. You might as well have sex, because the Colonel’s going to jerk your chain anyway. And he’ll calm down once he knows we’re not going to hurt him.”

Hawkeye shrugged.

“Besides, how the hell am I going to fuck him without someone to steady him? His arm’s in a sling!”

“You could get drunk too,” Hawkeye offered helpfully.

“I don’t want to get drunk,” Trapper said, more or less patiently. “I want to have sex. Then I’ll get drunk.”

“Fuck him if you want him,” Hawkeye repeated.

“Come on,” Trapper said. “This is serious. I need you.”

“Never let it be said that Benjamin Franklin Pierce failed a friend in need.” Hawkeye didn’t move.

Trapper waited. “Well?” He waited a beat longer. “I thought you never failed a friend in need.”

Hawkeye waved a finger at him. “I told you to never let that be said.”

“Look,” Trapper said, and changed his tactics. He took hold of Hawkeye’s arms and applied leverage: Hawkeye found himself yanked upright.

“I hate to tell you this,” Hawkeye said, sounding a little bemused even to his own ears, “but the filling’s still got all his clothes on.”

“Sweet God,” Trapper sounded faintly irritated, “do I have to do everything?”

Hawkeye shrugged. He kicked his shoes off. “Careful of his arm.”

Trapper grinned at him over the man’s shoulder. “Like it was my own.” He was careful, Hawkeye noted: once the man’s shirt was off, Trapper even replaced the sling. Then he backed the man into Hawkeye’s hands and stepped back himself, to strip off. Hawkeye eased the man and himself down to the blankets.

The man was shaking. Hawkeye held him. “Easy. No one’s going to hurt you.” He liked the feel of the man’s solid body against his: if the man would only calm down, he’d start enjoying it. Trapper was working on the man with thoroughness that surprised Hawkeye – he’d seen Trap in action before, and Trap usually went for the meat with his mouth open. Hawkeye settled himself with his left arm supporting the man’s left arm, and when Trapper’s mouth left the man’s nipples, he started to work on them with his fingers.

The man made a small whimpering sound as Trapper’s mouth closed over his cock. His muscles were tense, almost rigid: he had stopped trembling, but a couple of times his whole body jerked. The first time Trapper made a grunting noise of protest, and the second time he pulled his mouth up off the man’s cock and said “Can’t you hold him still?”

“What’s the problem?” Hawkeye said.

“Keep him still, can’t you?”

“You keep him pinned down. You’re at the right angle.”

“I’m doing all the work here.”

“That’s how I like it,” Hawkeye said. He was feeling oddly far away and distanced. “You do the work, I take the credit.” The man was trembling again. Hawkeye didn’t like it.

Trapper went back down again, this time keeping himself braced on the man’s legs. After a while the man’s trembling stopped and he went rigid again, arching up: he wasn’t making any of the noises Hawkeye associated with arousal, but he must be damn near coming. Trapper reared up and grinned at Hawkeye, triumphant and assured. “Edge him down a bit – ”

Between them they manoevered the man into position: he was shivering again. Hawkeye could feel the impact transmitting through the man’s muscles into his as Trapper slid into him. It would have been erotic – it should have been erotic – but somehow it wasn’t.

Hawkeye had heard Trapper fuck often enough to know exactly when he was finishing. He slid his hand down to the man’s cock – at least two out of three of them should get to enjoy it – and stroked him, expertly, in time with Trapper’s rhythm.

“Go for it,” he whispered.

The man came a beat after Trapper, with the same odd whimpering noise he had made before. For a long moment, he wasn’t shivering. Then he was trembling again. Trapper pulled out, as slow and gentle as he had gone in: he leaned forward and planted a cheerful kiss on the side of the man’s face, and another on Hawkeye. “Good boy,” he said, grinning. “Sweet God, Hawkeye, he’s good. Your turn.”

“No,” Hawkeye said. “I’m not – ”

“Come on.” Trapper was looking cheerful and satisfied. “Too proud to take sloppy seconds?”

“No,” Hawkeye said. “I’m just – not – ”

“You okay?”

“I’m fine. I’ll be fine.” Hawkeye moved back and let the man down on to the blankets. “Look, just leave me alone, okay?”

“Okay,” Trapper said. He sounded curiously neutral: when Hawkeye glanced at him, he put a quick grin on his face that slid off again too quickly.

“I’m fine,” Hawkeye repeated.

“Yeah.” Trapper stood up. “I’m heading over to the showers. You want me to take Francis along and get him scrubbed?”

Hawkeye glanced over, reluctantly, at the man huddled on the blankets. “Sure.”

“Okay,” Trapper said again. He pulled his bathrobe on. “Come on, Francis.”

The man twitched. He didn’t move.

“Come on,” Trapper said. He bent down and took hold of the man’s right arm. The man came up stiffly: his face was tilted down. He stood there without making any attempt to cover himself. He looked terrible.

“No,” Hawkeye said, standing up. “I’ll take him over myself later.”

“You want him, you got him,” Trapper said. He pushed the man towards Hawkeye. The man’s legs seemed stiff: he stumbled, and almost fell against Hawkeye. He didn’t clutch at Hawkeye: he tried to recover, and went down on his knees. The noise he made was halfway between a grunt and a whimper.

“You okay?” Trapper asked.

The man didn’t answer.

“Okay, I’m going to take a shower,” Trapper said. “And then we can get drunk and teach him how to answer to his given name.”

Hawkeye flapped a hand at Trapper. “I told you we should get drunk.”

“We could go over to the officer’s club and get drunk in decent surroundings.”

“Can we take Francis?”

“They let Radar in, don’t they?” Trapper glanced at the man. “He’ll need a shower. Sure you don’t want me to scrub him for you?”

“I’ll get it done,” Hawkeye said.

“Okay,” Trapper said: he picked up his towel, and left.

Hawkeye sat down on the blanket beside the man. “You want to tell me what the problem is?”

The man was shaking. His face looked crumpled. He lifted his hand to press at his mouth, and shook his head.

“No, you don’t want to tell me what the problem is?” Hawkeye put a hand on the man’s uninjured shoulder. “Look, Francis, I don’t know what your problem is, but I don’t want – I’ve got to keep you around, and I’m not used to whores looking at me like I’m their worst nightmare, and how can sex with Trapper be that bad – ?”

The man looked back at him. He swallowed. He didn’t say anything.

“Trapper really tried, you know. He wants you to get over this thing of thinking we’re going to hurt you. So do I.”

The man swallowed again. When he spoke, his voice was very cracked. “Can I put my clothes on now?”

“Sure,” Hawkeye said.

The man’s movements were awkward. He had trouble re-clothing himself one-handed. Hawkeye stepped in after watching him for a few stale moments. “Hey. Just lie down on your face – I want to check something.”

The man lay down and rolled over on to his stomach. When Hawkeye touched him, he let out something between a sigh and a groan. His skin was cold and slightly clammy. There was no sign of tearing or other injury to the anus: Trapper had gone to work carefully and well.

“Okay,” Hawkeye said. Positioned like this, the man looked not so much erotically available, as like a limp dishrag. The bruising on his back would fade in time. Maybe that would make him a more appetising sight. “You can get up now.”

The man didn’t move. When Hawkeye touched his shoulder again, he pressed his face down into the blanket. “Okay,” Hawkeye said again. “Look, you can’t lie there all day.” He pulled on the man’s right shoulder, annoyed.

The man felt almost like dead weight: when Hawkeye got him up on to his knees, he stayed there, his face empty, not even shivering. He made no move to reach for his clothes. Hawkeye ended up dressing him – the most the man did was cooperate, as if he realised what Hawkeye was doing only when he felt the cloth touch his skin. Even then his face stayed dead.

Hawkeye pulled him up and walked him over to Hawkeye’s bunk, and sat him on the end of it. The blankets were stained: well, that was Trapper’s problem. Hawkeye dumped them at the end of Trapper’s bunk. He came back to his own and lay down on it. His dad’s letter had to be read, sooner or later: it might as well be done now.


He hated reading his dad’s letters: he hated replying to them even more. Reading them only reminded him, too closely, that there was a world out there, outside the fences of the camp, outside the borders of Korea, a world from which he had come and to which he was supposed to return. Eventually. When they let him go. When he had done enough.

Writing back into this world was worse. He was spinning a story that was a lie from beginning to end. He could not tell his dad the truth about what he was here: he could not tell him what he had become. All he could do was hope that when they let him out, when they told him he could go home, there would still be a Hawkeye who could go home.

Trapper shrugged it off, or seemed to. He read bits of his letters from home out loud: he wrote back cheerfully, asking questions about their lives, telling lies about his.

“Where are you from, Francis?”

The man hadn’t moved. He didn’t speak or turn his head.

“I’m from Crabapple Cove. Maine.”

That got a response. The man looked round – a startled, almost confused stare.

“You’ve heard of it? Normally no one outside Maine ever has. Ever been there?”

The man shook his head. His gaze rested on Hawkeye, seeming fascinated.

to part 9